Nuansa'12: Canting, Was Enjoyable But ...

I attended Nuansa'12: Canting with no expectation, due to their last year show. I have been watching Nuansa Musical Show Production since 2010 and this 2012 show satisfied my eyes and ears, although there are some scenes that required my minds to patch it all together, which makes me wonder whether there are synchronization for story flow between my two friends who wrote the script. For example, I was confused from scene when the lead actress pregnant and all of sudden at the next scene, she is no longer pregnant. They should have developed the story in between first in my opinion, or perhaps there is no need to show the "pregnant scene", instead just skipped it directly to the scene when the kid already grown up to avoid momentary confusion. That's just one out of few confusing moments in the point of audience's view.

Nuansa'12: Canting ticket and handbook

As I mentioned that my eyes and ears were satisfied with this production, and I can say satisfy is underrated word to describe how I feel towards this musical. Firstly, they really have great choreography, which I found it as really a splendid item and indeed it showed great talent of dancers and choreographers from Indonesians in NUS. But, great choreographers item in this production is also a weakness of this production. Believe it or not, dancers who are supposedly serve as supporting casts for some scenes become a center of stage, which I found it is not right at all. For example during the lead actress did monologue, meanwhile there is a couple dancers did their contemporary dance item at another side of stage. In my opinion, supposedly dance item serve as support item to represent the lead actress monologue. Instead of feeling that way, my brain told me to focus mainly on the dance item.

Beside the choreography, the light and stage manager did a splendid job when they played around with the light and other visual effects. There are only few concerns for room of improvements after I discussed it with few friends. Some people who I talked to, found the visual effects background during "Dukun" scene and "Flood" scene i.e. fire and thunder visual effects respectively were not necessary. Visually, it ruins the scene awesomeness.

Moving on to musicality aspect. I found music arrangements of this production were really great. When I read the description of their Music Director, the experiences, awards, and formal education in Music justified the quality of Nuansa'12: Canting music arrangements. But, the production team should really check all the equipment, because there was microphone faulty (I think) during the show for first few scenes and it happened again somewhere towards the end of the show.

Overall, Nuansa'12 team really did a great job, with a score 4 out of 5 in my opinion, although I still prefer their 2010 show. Their strength points are their dance items and music arrangements, but the story flow and actress/actors skills should not be forgotten as the main focus in any kind of musical drama shows, not the other way around.

After the show, took picture with one of producers and lead actress!